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You might remember the ViewSonic VCD22, the odd, oversized Android tablet (or ARM-based AIO PC, if you will) first seen at Computex 2012. It returns, and ViewSonic now calls it the VSD220 Smart Display.

It remains mostly the same to what was seen at Computex, if with one major difference-- the battery is out. Otherwise it is still 22-inch Android 4.0 AIO PC with a 1920x1080 touchscreen and a dual-core OMAP 4 processor.

ViewSonic includes plenty of connectivity options, such as Micro HDMI, x3 USB ports, MicroSD card reader, RJ45, wifi and Bluetooth. The device also has a built-in 1.2MP front-facing webcam with integrated microphone and SRS Premium Sound speakers.

Will the VSD220 find success in a market filling up with Windows 8 AIO PCs? We will know once it hits the market on October 2012.

Go ViewSonic

Is transparent the colour (or lack thereof, rather) of future semiconductors? The combination of metal oxides and ultraviolet (UV) light might pave the road to such electronics, according to a team of scientists.

Current non-transparent semiconductors are based on silicon, gallium arsenide (GaAS) and other opaque materials. Metal oxide semiconductors, on the other hand, are not only transparent but also very efficient. However working on metal oxides demands very high temperatures (350C)-- too high for the plastic substrates flexible devices demand.

Now Yong-Hoon Kim and colleagues find a means of working on metal oxides at room temperatures, using UV irradiation. The team chemically activated metal particles in a chemical solution with intense UV light, creating a metal oxide film over the solution.

The process still has some issues-- the high intensity mercury UV lamp the researchers use cause the metal oxide film to heat up to 150C. Still, it is more efficient than current metal oxide creation methods, such as the "sol-gel" technique.

Metal oxide semiconductors are transparent (which is awesome), have a high electric charge carrier density (meaning efficiency at carrying current) and are "amorphous solids"-- making them ideal for flexible electronics for use in medical, transportation and scientific applications. Or the transparent bendy devices of the future!

Go Flexible Metal-Oxide Devices (Nature)

The New York Fashion Week is the last place most expect to find the latest in consumer hi-tech-- yet that is where the Google Glass augmented reality (AR) glasses made a showing, with several models sporting the glasses at the Diane Von Furstenberg finale.

The Belgian designer and members of her design and production team also got to wear the glasses at he event as part of "DVF through Glass," a video project Google will showcase on YouTube later this week.  "Beauty, style and comfort are as important to Glass as the latest technology... We are delighted to bring Glass to the runway together with DVF," Google co-founder and Glass "key leader" Sergey Brin says. Perhaps predictably, Brin also showed up at the fashion show wearing a pair of the AR goggles.

The Adata DashDrive HV610 looks a bit like a puzzle-- or rather, it is a USB 3.0 external HDD with a slide-out cover with interlocking shiny and matte puzzle piece lines.

The cover "locks" into the the pattern on the drive. It is available in a variety of colours and also acts as a means of holding the USB cable when not in use.

The drive itself comes in 2 colours (white or black) with either 500GB, 750GB or 1TB of storage. The USB 3.0 interface, while backwards compatible with USB 2.0, reduces data transfer times by up to 70% according to Adata.

Go Adata DashDrive HV610